Feb 20 2013

Feb 20 2013

The Open is the first step towards The CrossFit Games, held sometime in July in California. This is the 7th year for the games and as you can see from the video below it started out a little smaller than last weekend’s low-key CrossFit Utility Throwdown. The top 48 Men and top 48 women, along with the top 30 teams, will advance to Regionals. We’re the Central East Region and that competition will be in Columbus June 7-9. Central East is comprised of IN/MI/OH/KY/TN and our Region has WON the Games for the men for the last 3 years. In fact: Last year our region sent 5 Male Athletes (2 more than any other Region) and all 5 finished in the top 10 of 49 Male CrossFitters. Let that sink in for a moment…our WORST Games finisher was 10th – it’s a pretty tough region – Games Level guys in our region are Snatching 300lbs, hitting 315lb Hang Power Cleans for 5RMs, and have 450+ Fight Gone Bad Scores.

This is the 3rd year of The Open, before this there was a Sectional to get to regionals. Before that it was just regionals to qualify. And way back in the stone-age circa 20074 and 2008 you just showed up to compete.

The Open is 5 Weeks long. WODs are announced on Wednesday evening and we’ll be doing them as a gym Saturday at 12 noon. Everyone is welcome to join us – no fees (charging for The Open is bad form).

Should I do The Open?

Short answer: YES.

The gym’s goal is to qualify a Team for the Central East Regional. Few if any of our athletes are looking to compete individually. Qualifying alone is TOUGH.

That said competition brings out the unexpected in each of us! WODs must be done rx’d in The Open. Last year this pushed people to get their FIRST Toe 2 Bar, FIRST C2B Pull Ups, FIRST Double Unders, and so on. Do you have a realistic shot of making Regionals if you can’t already do that stuff? No. But that doesn’t mean competing isn’t for you.

Registration is $20. You sign up as an individual and select MTM CrossFit as your affiliate and team. There is also a Judges Course I highly suggest taking (I’ll refund your $10 if you pass the online course).